Weekly Address: President Obama: As the Combat Mission in Iraq Ends, We Must Pay Tribute to Those Who Have Served
WASHINGTON D.C. – In this week’s address, President Obama pledged to uphold the sacred trust the nation has with its troops and veterans as the combat mission in Iraq comes to an end. The administration is building a 21st century VA [Veterans Administration], making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.[TRANSCRIPT]
OFFICIAL STATEMENT – President Obama wants Congress to pass job-killing legislation that would guarantee permanent bailouts for Wall Street. Under his plan, unelected Washington bureaucrats would be granted virtually unlimited power to pick winners and losers and hardworking American taxpayers would pick up the tab for the reckless decisions made by irresponsible bankers. [TRANSCRIPT]
OFFICIAL STATEMENT/WASHINGTON D.C. – In this week of faithful celebration, President Barack Obama used his address to offer his holiday greeting and to call on people of all faiths and nonbelievers to remember our shared spirit of humanity. All people know the value of work, health, education, and community. This week is a time to be mindful of this common bond which is at the heart of all the world’s great religions. [TRANSCRIPT]
THE WHITE HOUSE, OFFICIAL STATEMENT – In his weekly address, the President looks back on a week that saw the passage of two major sets of reforms: one putting Americans in control of their own health care, and one ensuring student loans work for students and families, not as subsidies for bankers and middlemen. [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
(WIRE/CATO) – The apparent drug gang killings of U.S. consular employees this weekend in Juarez, Mexico are a bloody reminder that President Obama is getting the United States involved in yet another war it cannot win. Drug gang killings also occurred in Acapulco, with a total of 50 such fatalities nationwide over the weekend.
Unfortunately, Obama has responded to the latest incident by following the same failed strategy as his predecessors when confronted with drug war losses: a stronger fight against drugs.
Though the deaths are the first in which Mexican drug cartels appear to have so brazenly targeted and killed individuals linked to the U.S. government, illicit drug trade violence has killed some 18,000 people in Mexico since President Calderon came to power in December 2006—more than three times the number of American military personnel deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
The carnage only shot up after Calderon declared an all-out war on drug trafficking upon taking office. After more than three years, the policy has failed to reduce drug trafficking or production, but it is weakening the institutions of Mexican democracy and civil society through corruption and bloodshed, which are the predictable products of prohibition.
The 29 people killed in drug-related violence this weekend in a 24 hour period in the state of Guerrero sets a dubious record for a Mexican state. And an increasing number of Mexicans, including former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, are calling for a thorough rethinking of anti-drug policy in Mexico and the United States that includes legalization. Legalization would significantly reduce drug cartel revenue and put an end to an enormous black market and the social pathologies that it creates.
Ian Vásquez, Director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, The CATO Institute
Ian Vásquez is the director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining the Cato Institute in 1992, Vásquez worked on inter-American issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Caribbean/Latin American Action. His articles have appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Latin America including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Miami Herald, the Financial Times, Investors’ Business Daily, El Comercio (Peru), El Economista (Mexico), El Mercurio (Chile), and El Nuevo Herald (U.S.). Vásquez regularly appears on CNBC, NBC, C-SPAN Washington Journal, CNN en Español, Telemundo, Univision, and Canadian Television, as well as NPR and Voice of America. He received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and his master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT/WASHINGTON D.C. – Hello, I’m House Republican Leader John Boehner. I’m speaking to you from the Capitol, where in a matter of hours, the House of Representatives will vote on health care legislation sure to have a drastic effect on our economy and our lives.
It was here fourteen months ago that President Obama took the oath of office with a promise to govern from the center. Republicans stood ready to work with our new president and find common ground to address the issues Americans care about.
Unfortunately, President Obama and Democrats in Washington chose a partisan path and a costly, big-government agenda.
The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ isn’t working as struggling families continue to ask: ‘where are the jobs?’ And taxpayers’ hard-earned money is being spent so fast that two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt on President Obama’s watch. [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
OFFICIAL STATEMENT / WASHINGTON D.C. – As a key committee in the Senate takes up reforming the ways of Wall Street, the President lays down a marker: “I urge those in the Senate who support these reforms to remain strong, to resist the pressure from those who would preserve the status quo, to stand up for their constituents and our country. And I promise to use every tool at my disposal to see these reforms enacted: to ensure that the bill I sign into law reflects not the special interests of Wall Street, but the best interests of the American people.” [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
(WIRE/IndInst) – President Obama has been so chastened by his failure to meet the pledge of closing Guantánamo prison within a year that Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, is trying to negotiate with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to gain Republican support for doing so. In exchange, Graham wants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 attackers tried using a military tribunal instead of a civilian court and also wants unconstitutional legislation allowing the indefinite detainment of terrorism suspects without trial. Closing Gitmo is designed to revive a tarnished U.S. image abroad rather than being a substantive change in policy, and it now apparently may come at the expense of using unconstitutional and discredited means of holding and trying terrorism suspects.
Although closing Guantánamo would be important symbolically, the law-free sanctuary that the Bush administration had achieved there has already been eroded by the Supreme Court’s demand that detainees have some legal rights. And even if the Obama administration closes Gitmo, some of Bush’s unconstitutional policies would continue in prisons around the United States—for example, the use of military tribunals for some detainees and the detention of some former Guantánamo detainees indefinitely without trial. Thus, the world should, and probably will, focus on the U.S. government’s continued violation of detainees’ rights rather than where they are violated—thus negating any positive public relations benefits from closing Gitmo.
John Adams defends British soldiers charged
with murder after “The Boston Massacre”
But why should suspected diabolical terrorists have rights? Because these are our rights that are being trampled on too. The key word here is “suspected.” No matter how horrendous the crime—and slaughtering innocents for political reasons is about as heinous as it gets—the alleged culprit deserves a fair trial because he or she could actually be not guilty. Governments, including U.S. federal, state, and local governments, routinely make mistakes and jail the wrong people for crimes. According to Anthony Gregory, author of a forthcoming book on legally challenging incarcerations, an academic study of Guantánamo prisoners found that more than half had never committed a hostile act against the United States. And all but a few percent had not been picked up by American authorities, but had been turned over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan by Afghans to claim handsome rewards. In other words, innocent people had been turned in to get cash. Only 8 percent of Gitmo detainees were al-Qaeda members.
And why are military tribunals so bad? Although they have been slightly improved since the Bush administration originally set up its kangaroo military courts, they still lack the procedural safeguards of detainee rights found even in military courts-martial. Even more important, they are unconstitutional. The 6th Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights requires a jury trial for all criminal offenses, with no exception for national security cases. Proponents of military tribunals cite their use to try would-be German spies and saboteurs during World War II, but they were no more constitutional then than now. Furthermore, the killing of almost 3,000 people on 9/11 was a shameful crime, and those that allegedly perpetrated it should not be elevated to “warrior” status by trying them in a military tribunal.
Obama is only contemplating abandoning civilian trials for the alleged 9/11 attackers because of political pressure against holding such trials where the attacks occurred—southern New York, eastern Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. It is disheartening that the public in these attacked areas would not leap at the chance to uphold justice and the American legal system in their own communities.
Overseas, people will merely see any use of kangaroo military tribunals for what they are: attempts to shop jurisdictionally to get convictions more easily. Already the Obama administration selected the cases easiest to prove—those against the 9/11 attackers—for pursuit in civilian courts and relegated the more difficult ones to remain in military tribunals. This policy then created the anomaly that the most heinous defendants got the most rights. Of course, throwing the alleged 9/11 attackers’ case back to into military tribunals will correct this anomaly, but at the expense of violating the 6th Amendment. Thus, all defendants in terrorism cases should be tried in civilian courts as potential criminals.
Lastly, the civilian courts—just as they have in other cases with sensitive information, such as espionage and Mafia cases—have an excellent record of obtaining convictions. Civilian trials have resulted in hundreds of successful terrorism prosecutions, whereas the flawed military tribunals have resulted in only a few convictions—and most of those were overturned.
So if a deal is cut with Sen. Graham to close Guantánamo in exchange for tossing the alleged 9/11 attackers’ case back into military tribunals, the Constitution again will have been trampled under foot and the positive symbolism of closing Gitmo will have been offset by the use of kangaroo military commissions, which have been justly reviled around the world.
Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs.
Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire, CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.
Weekly Address: President Obama to Send Updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act Blueprint To Congress on Monday
THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON D.C. – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama announced that on Monday, his administration will send to Congress the blueprint for an updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act that will overhaul No Child Left Behind. The plan will set the ambitious goal of ensuring that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and a career, and it will provide states, districts and schools with the flexibility and resources to reach that goal. [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
Senator Scott Brown (MA) who was swept into office in large part thanks to “Tea-Party” / Independent voters in Massachusetts delivers this week’s GOP address. During the campaign, Senator Brown relied on the vague platform of “Change”, a tactic originally utilized by President Obama, as his pathway to victory. However, in his short time in the Senate, he has already proved to be disappointing to a large part of his “Tea-Party” base and merely par for the course in terms of Washington D.C.’s status quo. Many analysts inside of the Pro-Liberty and Tea-Party movements correctly forecast that his candidacy was merely a furthering of the false left/right paradigm whereby both parties routinely capitalize on voter discontent with the majority-of-the-moment offering up faux opposition, thereby retaining their stranglehold on power, albeit with different letters, i.e. ‘D’ or ‘R’ for the sake of appearances.
In addition to voting for the President’s “Give everyone a Teaspoon-to-dig-ditches” Jobs bill, Senator Brown has signed on as a Co-Sponsor to Senator McCain’s bill, S.3081 which seeks to grant government the authority to detain Americans indefinitely, with no charges, and solely under suspicion of an Ad hoc group.
Nevertheless, Senator Brown uses his weekly address to urge President Obama to listen to the “will of the People” on health care reform, while simultaneously advocating for big government intrusion into the private-sector as a means “to fix the economy”. [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
WASHINGTON D.C. – In this week’s address, President Obama pledged to uphold the sacred trust the nation has with its troops and veterans as the combat mission in Iraq comes to an end. The administration is building a 21st century VA [Veterans Administration], making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.[TRANSCRIPT]
